In conversation with Frida Orupabo

Born in Norway and proudly embracing both Norwegian and Nigerian roots, Frida Orupabo ventured into the world of collage art in her early twenties as a way to navigate her intricate feelings about home and identity. After furthering her education in sociology and gaining experience as a social worker, she turned to Instagram to share her curated archive of images, both collected and reimagined. Under the handle @nemiepeba, what began as a modest, anonymous endeavour for a select few blossomed into a significant following. Following her noteworthy participation in Arthur Jafa’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2017, Orupabo’s work has gained international recognition, earning her a place in prominent art exhibitions around the globe and the SPECTRUM International Prize for Photography this year. I reviewed her show in Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet in April and had the pleasure of meeting her four months later. We continued our conversation via email exploring the background to that exhibition and her process.

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Akin Oladimeji: Can you say how the idea for the show at both galleries came about?

Frida Orapubo: The dialogue between Bonniers Konsthall, my gallery (Galerie Nordenhake) and me started in 2022, with the then artistic director at Bonniers Konsthall, Theodor Ringborg. I had previously shown works with my gallery in Stockholm but this would be the first time I had a solo exhibition at a Swedish institution.Then in 2023 I had a conversation with Solveig Øvstebø, the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Astrup Fearnley (AF) that led to the decision to show an adapted version of the Bonniers exhibition at AF the following year. The show was co-commissioned by the two institutions.  

AO: I had previously seen your work in two dimensional form and the show I saw at Astrup Fearnley in Oslo marked a departure. There you had films and works installed to resemble sculptures. What was responsible for the incorporation of those mediums?

FO: This is not the first time I have incorporated other types of mediums than paper collages. In my first show in NYC at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 2019, I showed a video work. Then, for my show held in Rome in 2020, also at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, I worked with sculptures (screen-printed aluminum) for the first time. What might be seen as a change is the increase in the amount of different types of mediums shown in the past exhibitions at Bonniers and AF. I have, maybe in the last couple of years, more extensively, tested prints on different materials, such as metal, wood and now also fabric.I like the different feel it gives the images. I will already know once I look at an image or a digital collage what type of material it should be printed onto.The use of metal also came as a solution for a wish to make works that could be placed in the middle of a room. I wanted the expression to be confrontational, hard, unmovable, heavy not only because of the sculpture’s gaze but its physicality. 

With the show at Bonniers and AF I felt the different mediums (collage, sculpture, video, curtains) together with the towering pedestals gave a more intense experience because of the way each work was placed in relation to one another. It’s almost the same as how I work on my Instagram where each post has its own meaning, but together they create a more complex narrative or dialogue – which is the conversation I want to have. So you have layers of conversations on top of one another, that might or might not make sense. 

AO: I’m curious about how you work. Do you have a dedicated studio, do you go to physical archives or is it still mainly online searches that yield the colonial images that you draw on?

FO: I work from home. I have a small room close to the kitchen but this room is basically used as a storage for the collages. I store the collages in a bed and on a table – depending on the size. The actual work of printing, cutting, taping and pinning happens, for the most part, in the living room or in the kitchen.  

Most of the images I find and work with are found online. I use different platforms like tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, eBay, Etsy, google among others. The images I collect – screenshot and save – are uploaded to a folder on dropbox. There is really no system or organization within those folders. When starting on a digital collage I will begin with something I really like and then go forth and back – testing different parts that will accompany the first piece. The starting point can for instance be a leg or a body, and the selection of the different parts are done based on how they/it feel(s).

AO: I remember coming across this year on Instagram (where you first gained prominence incidentally) a concept from Dr Georgia Nasseh at Oxford who argues that photomontage is a form of decolonization of photography, a way of disrupting ‘photography’s coloniality, allowing for the fragmentation and juxtaposition, the merging and colliding of multiple photographic frames, conceptually and practically.’ Would you align yourself with that concept?

FO: Yes. I do see my work as a form of disruption, and as a form of decolonization – in terms of how we think and see. Collage for me is a very fruitful way of questioning and recreating narratives and identities. By taking apart, manipulating, and bringing things together that originally were not meant to stand together, it can open up for new readings and experiences. For me it is the layering and overlaps that reveals complexities and contradictions – things that make us human, but which often are denied Black people within western dominant discourses.The gaze is important to me and I see it as linked to agency and to resistance. A question I often think of is whether it is possible to use black subjects to represent universal concerns.

I think this question has a strong presence in the process of both making and also placing my work within a gallery context – like, ‘How do I make complex narratives and identities that oppose and break with stereotypical ideas of what it means to be a black woman’. And so, the twisting of limbs, the gaze, the hybridity or different bodies is for me an attempt to escape these really narrow and violent understandings and discourses of who I am/who we are.

AO: Can you tell me what it meant to be shown in Astrup Fearnley in Oslo?

FO: I had such a wonderful collaboration both at Astrup Fearnley and at Bonniers Konsthall. To be recognized and appreciated always feels good. And for an artist (especially a Black Norwegian female artist) it has a special weight when it comes from an institution like AF.

AO: I am also curious about the effect of winning the 2025 Spectrum prize on your psyche, and what kind of interest it has led to from private and institutional collections. 

FO: It made me happy and it made me feel seen and appreciated. I’m not sure how much it shaped my psyche, nor the type of interest it led to.

AO: What are your ambitions for the future/any future project you are most excited about?

FO: I’m always excited about new shows. I have a couple of projects and shows coming up next year. Concerning solo exhibitions, I will have one in Stockholm at Galerie Nordenhake, late spring. Then, Lisbon at the Museum of Contemporary Art – MAC/CCB, early summer and Stevenson Gallery in Amsterdam and Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, late autumn. It’s always joyous to start to envision new works in new settings.

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Frida Orupabo’s next body of work will be shown at the Momenta Bienniale in Montréal (10 Sep – 29 Nov 2025)

Akin Oladimeji is a critic, lecturer and writer. He is undertaking a PhD funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council at University College, London on performance art.